Top Instagram Updates You Need to Know in 2019

Instagram has been a rapidly-developing platform since Facebook first acquired it several years back, and it clearly doesn’t have intentions of slowing down.

This month, Instagram has rolled out new interactive features for Story Ads, which may take brand awareness to a complete new level.

They’re also testing features that can add to other forms of interactivity on the platform, alongside improving the general user experience.

Have we piqued your interest yet? If that’s the case, keep reading to see what the newest Instagram updates have available for us this month.

Polling Designed for Sponsored Stories

Instagram Story stickers have easily been one of the greatest developments the feature has had as it was released many years back. And consider the amount of updates and developments Stories have gotten since they’ve gone insta viewer that’s impressive.

What I’m likely to call “sticker effects” have now arrived at Instagram’s Story Ads, bringing interactivity to an ad format that previously really only was limited by “click here” as an option.

When making a Story Ad, advertisers will have the ability to add a polling question to the image or video they’re using through the Creatives part of the creation process. You are able to ask users a question, and give them two choices to decide on between.

If you’re running Story Ads, take advantage of this feature. Users are now actually knowledgeable about the polling feature from native Stories, and speaking from experience, many who watch are happy to engage. I’ve had as much as 70% response rates from the audience who viewed each Story, which really is a pretty high engagement rate for just about anything on social media.

This is a superb way, therefore, to begin to create new relationships with your audience and grab their attention right off the bat. They could not work quite as well for conversion-focused ads, but they’d be perfect for brand awareness purposes.

In Testing: Lockout on Old UsernamesDeveloper Jane Manchun Wong is lightning-fast when it comes to catching new changes and in-testing features on Instagram, and she’s caught an appealing one this month.

She realized that Instagram is appearing to try an experimental feature that will put a hold on tight your older term for 14-days once you change it. If you choose to revert your name back within the grace period, you can do so without concern that someone else may have claimed it.

This feature is likely an immediate reaction to username grabberbots, which have become an increasingly prevalent issue on the platform, particularly amongst high profile accounts.

This is a superb call. While it’s not as common that will affect all businesses, if you’re ever in the career of a rebranding or having to update your social profiles, you absolutely wish to be able to retain your present name if a sudden change happens within that two week time period.

I once knew someone who had experienced this firsthand; they’d just rebranded, and were distributing 10,000 postcards to attain cold audiences, but had their old Instagram ID attached. By enough time they noticed the mistake, only some days following the name change, another person had claimed their generic but high-traffic name. They had to reprint most of the postcards.

Ideally, try to double check everything before you change those names, but because mistakes happen or you may get cold feet for whatever reason, this is a superb choice to have.